Research Interests

My main research concerns the naturalization of metaphysics, i.e. the process of holding metaphysics accountable to science. I say both what that process should involve and why we should engage in it. The negative portion of the project identifies a kind of metaphysical theorizing I call free range metaphysics and spells out its epistemic shortcomings (see my article "Keep the Chickens Cooped"). The positive portion spells out my conception of naturalized metaphysics, in which metaphysics conscientiously and painstakingly engages with the data, theories, theoretical interpretations, and practices of science. I contend that metaphysics of that sort is epistemically preferable to its free range alternative. Part of the reason is that relatively well-constrained theories are, other things being equal, epistemically preferable, and naturalized metaphysics is better constrained than free range ("Epistemic Infrastructure for a Scientific Metaphysics").

I have also published on the prospects for a grounding-based formulation of physicalism ("Physicalism"), the possibility of a naturalized approach to grounding ("Naturalizing Grounding"), as well as Quine's apparent inconsistency regarding the rational revisability of logic ("Resolving Quine's Conflict").

My ongoing projects pertain to the possibility of accommodating causation in an eliminative ontic structural realist framework, the nature of epistemological emergence, as well as the role of intervention in metaphysical methodology.

Publications

"Epistemic Infrastructure for a Scientific Metaphysics"(forthcoming). Grazer Philosophische Studien. Download.

"Naturalisms" (2020). Think. 19:56. 35-50. Download.

A Thousand Flowers on the Road to Epistemic Anarchy: Comments on Chakravartty’s Scientific Ontology (forthcoming). Dialogue. Download.

"Physicalism" (2020). ​Routledge Handbook of Metaphysical Grounding. Ed. Michael Raven. New York: Routledge. 484-500. Download.

​"Keep the Chickens Cooped: The Epistemic Inadequacy of Free Range Metaphysics"  (2020). Synthese. 197. 1867-1887. Download.

"Naturalizing Grounding: How Theories of Ground Can Engage Science" (2018). Philosophy Compass​. 13:e12489. Download.

"Each Kuhn Mutually Incommensurable" (2018). Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 7, no. 6: 1-7. Link.

​​​“Resolving Quine’s Conflict: A Neo-Quinean View of the Rational Revisability of Logic” (2017). Australasian Journal of Logic. 14:1. 30-45.​ Download.

"What's Metaphysics All About?" (2017). The Institute of Art and Ideas. ​Link.